Fortnight Fiction: Feet First, First Time

Welcome to Fortnight Fiction. As the introductory post to this blog, I feel obligated to set expectations (both mine and yours) so that miscommunication and confusion is minimized. In a dynamic and ever-changing world I would like this blog to be a haven of combobulation. I will start off by going into further detail on the subtext of this blog:

Author B. Walter Schuler creates fiction on this blog at least once every two weeks. These works bookend updates on his other projects and general insights on all manner of subjects.

By "Author," I simply mean "one who writes." I am not published (yet) and I certainly do not want to get things started on the wrong foot by misleading you. In the future I may be published and, rest assured, you will know it when I am (with much pomp and fanfare, I imagine).

"B. Walter Schuler" sounds much more like an author than "Ben W. Schuler" so I am using it. I do not hate my name by any stretch of the imagination. If you meet me in public, feel free to call me Ben with the assurance that I will respond to it. Thank you T. Catherine for the idea. I hope you do not mind my stealing it!

As far as the short literary piece delivered at least once every two weeks (suddenly "Fortnight Fiction" makes sense), it will serve several functions. The primary function is to keep me writing. I claim to love to write, but I do surprisingly little of it. What I do love to do is create ideas and the turns of phrase that convey them to a degree that is (at the very least) accurate and appropriate and (at the very most) artful and enjoyable. Unfortunately this all happens in my head. This self-asserted demand that I must produce timely short fiction helps me to realize those thoughts in written form.

Here is where you come in. I would like your comments. I want to see your compliments, your criticism (constructive or non, if you must) and your jests. I do not mind at all going into grammar minutiae. For example, I would have liked someone to point out my error had I written "farther detail" and not "further detail" at the end of the first paragraph of this post. If you do this for me I shall endeavor to live up to three principles in my writing.

1) I promise to listen. There are few things that irritate me more than people who ask for advice and then do not listen to it. I do not mind it if they listen and then do not heed the advice (I will be doing that at times, I am sure), but it irks me to no end when they simply do not listen. After all, if I had not listened to my father, old boss, T. Catherine and a work peer, I would still be pronouncing Schuyler "Shu'-ee-ler," Cerberus "Seh'-reh-bus," Seamus "See'-mus," and Fresnel "Fres'-nel," respectively.

2) I promise to try to write complete passages for you. This means more work for me, but it will serve us both better in the end. The work will be more enjoyable for you and, as a consequence, you will comment. After all, you will read more, having not deleted my blog off of your bookmark list and RSS feeder.

3) I promise not to write filler. It will be tempting at times to want to just hurry up and write something, anything, that way I can keep up my writing streak. This does not bode well for quality and readership will slip, and neither of us wants that (see previous pledge). The thing to do is be honest, tell you nothing worthwhile was written, send you an interesting link (I am The Broom Master, by the way), and let the guilt propel me into an early start for next time.

Finally, the last little bit of this blog's subtext states that there will be project updates and insights between the fiction. I feel this will be very organic and I am willing, if you are, to see into what it grows given a little time. I anticipate an example of a project update might be something like an update to the online version of the ZOMBIES!!! table-top game by Twilight Creations Inc. that I am creating with some help from a friend. I imagine I will be posting works-in-progress, code samples and posing interface questions. Examples of general insights I might post include anything from which way the toilet paper should hang to I lost over 11% of my body-weight in a weight-loss competition at work. You can skip those posts if you want, but I am going to try my best to make them entertaining, so you may miss something.

This post went a little long, I do not expect others to do the same. Enjoy the rest of the posts. Feel free to give me a swift kick if these posts are not updated often. I will thank you. Probably.

-B. Wally